


213 Hours

by dykefilm



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Angst, Captivity, F/M, Post S3, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:42:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 18,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23234170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dykefilm/pseuds/dykefilm
Summary: Follows Raquel through the days that follow her arrest and follows Sergio through his grief and struggles. Multichapter written in self-isolation in preparation for the S4 | Sequel here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23311486/chapters/55835851
Relationships: Raquel Murillo/Professor | Sergio Marquina
Comments: 21
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

She didn’t fight against them. She saw the upper hand that was to be gained. She might be dead to him, but she was still breathing. As long as she was alive, she might come up with a way to help and so she went with them willingly. 

In the back of the police van, she mulled over every possible outcome and concluded that there was nothing she could do right now. She would play their game and she would pray that the heist went as planned. 

She prayed for Sergio. She prayed that he would keep ahold of his own thoughts and finish this. She prayed that he would make sure nobody died for her. God didn’t seem to be listening but she pleaded with Him all the same. 

“Traidor, Murillo,” Suarez barked from the driver’s seat. 

It reminded her of Tokyo. Traidor. Rata. La gente de mierda. She wondered how the girl was, so young and full of fury, she wondered if she was tired yet of fighting.  
Raquel ignored Suarez as he tore into her. He was sharp-tongued but he never truly scathed her. She was far too preoccupied with her own thoughts to worry about the insults he hurled at her as they drove. 

They were headed back to Madrid. Through the window next to Suarez’s head, she could see the city as they entered it. The roads that had felt like home a million moons ago, the heart of a country which she barely recognised after so long. 

She wondered what would happen. Alicia Sierra would meet her upon arrival and take her to some dungeon inside which she would be asked over and over again. Donde esta la profesor? She would forget the answers if she kept on lying. Cuál es el plan? The truth would become a distant memory eventually. 

They couldn’t harm her on Spanish soil. She remembered what Rio had told them. She wondered what they could get away with here. Raquel was curious to see just how far Alicia would go. Primero te cuelgan desnudo de unas cadenas. Would she stop there? What kind of a woman was she? 

Raquel couldn’t help but imagine how all of this would’ve gone if she’s never borrowed Sergio’s phone charger, if she’d never fallen in love with him and chased him to Palawan and made him fall in love with her too. Would he be rich right now? Would he be happy? Would she? 

Yo quiero pasar contigo el resto de mi vida. It rang in her ears. It was more than happiness. There was nothing quite so magnificent as hearing those words. It broke her heart to know how he would be mourning for that promise. She had to get back to him if only for that: he would spend the rest of his life alone if she didn’t. 

The streets are packed with protestors and it’s the first change Raquel has to see it up close. She knew the support they had garnered, she saw it on the news, but she had never allowed herself to think about long enough that it might give her false hope. 

“Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood!” They chanted it as the van drove past and she wondered if they were talking about him. It might have been Rio or Denver or Palermo but in her mind, it was Sergio that they all cheered for in the streets. 

They were too close to the bank. She started to worry that Suarez had bigger plans for her than interrogation. She would be no use to them inside, though perhaps they would try to use her as a bargaining chip the way they had with Rio. She feared for her life then. She wasn’t their handsome young sweetheart, nor was she the mother figure that such a group might be in need of; she had let herself remain an outside among them and they would risk nothing to save a stranger’s life, no matter who loved her. 

Sergio might hate them all for the rest of their lives but they’d be rich and they wouldn’t care. He might hate them. He might be grateful for all she knew. No, she thought. She had to stop herself from thinking like that. She’d lose her mind far quicker without his assurances to keep her grounded. 

She clung desperately to every word she’d ever heard out of his mouth. Raquel grabbed tight onto the thought of him and hoped she wouldn’t lose hold.  
They were outside of the bank now. Raquel was starting to panic. They weren’t here to watch it all unfold from a safe distance, of that she was sure. She knew that there was something bigger planned, she could feel it. 

She was a know-it-all. She hastened to admit it but she couldn’t bear not to know what was going on. To be clueless was an agony for her. The surprises that Alberto had constantly thrust upon her had sent her reeling every time and she’d been free of it for a short while. She had been in control and now she was in somebody else’s.  
They dressed her in police uniform and she felt all at once like a stranger to her self. It wasn’t a familiar feeling. She’d left behind that life and she’d never thought of going back to it, not for a solitary moment. 

Raquel, dressed head-to-toe in bulletproof gear with an escort on each side trying their best to appear casual among the crowds. She didn’t make a scene. There was no point in that. She knew it would do more harm than good. She feared not only for herself but for thirty-nine souls she’d never met and for a handful that she had.  
Inside the tent, there stood the famed Alicia Sierra. She stood at the heart of the operation with a baby in her belly and a grimace spread across her face.  
“Lisboa, te preguntas por qué estás aquí,” she began. “Te ofrezco la libertad.”


	2. Chapter 2

The gun shot sent him to knees. He fell right there in the forest and dropped his head into his hand. Fear had never shot through him like in that moment, it felt sharper than any bullet he imagined.

Sergio wanted to keep running. He wanted to run all the way to his love’s side and let them shoot him dead beside her. He would’ve if there was energy left in his tired old bones but the promise of a future with her was the only thing that had kept him going these past days.

Questions raced through his head so fast he couldn’t find their answers. He wondered if he even wanted to find them. There was nothing he could hear that might’ve restored his spirit.

There were so many lives at stake and all of them, in part at least, in his hands. He didn’t care about a soul amongst them in that moment. He had never accommodated for the possibility that he might lose her. Had it been anyone else, he could bear it, but not her.

When Berlin had died, he’d been inconsolable and still, he’d held his grief at arm’s length until they all were safe. He’d stayed calm for long enough that he could grieve without being shot at by a firing squad.

Somehow, all his inhibitions had left his body as soon as he had heard the gun fired. He wondered if she hadn’t been his brains all along. Sergio doubted he had any sense left, she’d stolen it the moment she had promised never to point a gun at him again.

He wanted to die right there but a voice in his head told him not to be foolish.

_“Cuando muera-”_

_He stopped her with urgent kisses. The monastery felt like it was a million miles away from reality and he didn’t want to entertain the prospect of ever leaving their bed._

_“Cuando muera,” she began again, pushing him away to make him listen. “No puedes rendirte, si?”_

_Sergio wouldn’t listen to her. She spoke about death so easily. She spoke about it so often. It made him nauseous and she knew it._

_“I know what you’re like, Sergio, I know the things you will do. The things you’ve done for others and I know you’ll do them for me too. Keep living, two dead bodies won’t do Paula any good, no?”_

He’d drowned her in his love and pleaded with her to stop speaking of such awful things. He’d thought them impossible. This was the great flaw he’d been so fearful of. He’d known all along there was some loophole that he hadn’t seen and she’d fallen right through it.

In the near distance, he could hear sirens. He wondered where they’d take her body. They’d take it to some dank, icy mortuary and use it as a bargaining chip in this painstaking game they so enjoyed. It made him furious to think about their hands on her, even now, _using_ her as they had for most of her life.

 _I can’t lose the rest of them,_ Sergio thought. Suddenly his grief turned from depression to fixation and he was on his feet, running as fast as he could away from the sirens. He would keep running for the rest of his life until the heist was over and the people were rich and Raquel was laid to rest.

He ran for miles until he came to a narrow road. It was empty for as far as eye could see or ear could hear and so he chased north up the length of it. It was beginning to get dark when he saw a car pulled into the driveway of a farmhouse and jimmied the lock.

The drive to the city was not a long one. Speeding through the country paths, he found that Madrid was far closer than he’d ever believed it to be. He didn’t know where he was going, not exactly, only that he needed to find a new place to set up shop.

Inside the city walls, the lively rebellion went on and crowds flooded the streets. He drove as close as he could to The Hanoi. To hide in plain sight was a cliche, but with good reason. Nobody would believe him bold enough to take such great risks.

He ditched the car half a mile away and strolled through the streets like he was a law abiding citizen. Among strangers rallied together in a common cause, nobody was the enemy save the police.

It was still unlocked. Remarkable, he thought, that they had been so thorough in their search of the premises and somehow they had left the door unlocked. Nobody would take on the lease, of that he was certain, but still, they ought to maintain it somehow. A crime scene in the heart of Madrid and they had left it open to the public.

Inside, it was an empty vessel. They had taken everything. There remained nothing but the floorboards, they’d even stripped the wallpaper in their desperation.

Sergio walked to the spot where the piano had once been. He thought for less than a second of the first night he had spent with Raquel before forcing the memory out of his mind and dropping to the floor.

He twisted the screw with his nail and as it began to come loose, blood started to drip down his finger. He might have panicked if he was still protecting his identity but the notion of anonymity was long passed. He tore the screw out of the floor and tugged the floorboard up to expose an empty space.

At the bottom, just within his reach, was a small wooden box. He hoisted it out and pulled open the lid to expose a laptop and three mobile phones. They’d been there since the Royal Mint heist began and he’d never been so grateful to his former self.

Raquel had said the plan was fuelled by a desire for vengeance. He had thought that she was wrong, but now, he thought, this could have a greater purpose. He could set them free and share the fortune and expose the darkest secrets of the police force. He could avenge _her_ death.


	3. Chapter 3

Sat down at a table in the middle of the tent, Raquel felt like she had a dozen pairs of eyes on her. It made her nervous to know just how close she was to the others. It made her feel sick.

Alicia sat across from her and flicked through a file casually for as long as she could be bothered to. It was surprising how long she endured the silence. Ever since the academy, she’d been unbearably impatient. Hard-headed in her approach and it was what had gotten her so far in the world, she reminded Raquel of herself sometimes.

They were the only women in the tent. The men gawked at them without shame and waited for the sparks to fly.

Alicia dropped the file open on the desk and slid it towards Raquel. Inside were photos of her family, inside was every piece of information they had on the Murillos. She made no effort to hide her anxieties, she knew it was what Alicia was looking for. She let herself tear up as she remembered for the first time in weeks just how vulnerable she had left Paula and Marivi. She let herself grieve for the life she had left behind.

“ _Si no colaboras, 30 a_ _ños.”_ Straight to the point. No frills, just fact. “ _Tu decides, Inspectora.”_

Raquel allowed herself to cry for the first time in weeks. Since all of this had started she’d never taken a second to consider what it all meant. This was the perfect opportunity: kill two birds with one stone. The space to be sad and the stage to be sad. Alicia watched her with a curiosity the like Raquel had never seen. Calculating the emotions on a distraught woman’s face and mapping out a scenario from them, it was the work of a psychopath.

There was no question in her mind. In that barn, with those chickens and that fool called Justino who had left her to die, she had believed it was her life at stake. With a gun pointed at her head and no defence but her secrets, she had stayed loyal to him. No measly threat of prison would deter her. She feared for her family, but Sergio would protect them. Sergio would never leave them to face the fate meant for her. She had no doubt that he would keep them safe for the rest of their lives.

“No se donde esta el Profesor.” It came like clockwork to her mind. She recited it once, and they became the only words she said for what felt like hours of interrogation. Alicia threatened her child, she threatened her mother, she threatened her _life,_ and still there were no words from her lips but those. “No se donde esta el Profesor.“ 

Alicia lost patience quickly. There was no end to the struggles she had known with some of the greatest criminal masterminds in Spanish history but never had she met such pig-headedness. With each response, she drew closer to anger, and with each question, Raquel seldom flinched.

It was insanity. There was nothing quite like the loyalty of a woman to a man she believed loved her. Alicia wondered how anyone could be such a fool. It drove her mad.

“Your mother, your daughter, your friends, they will all lose you. They will never see you again and all for a man who put your best friend in a coma and let you risk your life for him? Love is a fool’s errand, it seems.”

The tent was at a standstill. Outside, the chaos raged on. Raquel could hear the crowds chanting and she wondered what they were waiting for. Did they dream of some great escape right in front of their eyes? All their hopes would be smeared when they realised that their band of righteous robbers would leave without even a wave.

Had they lost hope? Raquel wondered how they could afford to stop everything for the sake of interrogating her. They had the resources, they had the manpower, why bring her here?

“We have it all planned out, Inspectora. Every single step, for you to go into the Bank and to bring this scheme tumbling down on your friends’ heads before anybody else gets hurt. Do you want to lose _all_ of your friends?” Alicia knew the game that she was playing. Raquel tried and failed to hide her concern and it drew a conniving smile. “Sweet Nairobi just doesn’t know when to recognise a trap right in front of her eyes.”

Raquel made a show of her emotions. She let tears spill onto her cheeks. She let her bottom lip wobble dangerously. She let them all see the cracks in her facade and then she said, once again: “No se donde esta el Profesor.”

“Llévatela!” The Inspector snapped harshly. “dele tiempo para considerar…y asegurarse de que no duerma.”

Raquel was hoisted up by one of the unfamiliar faces among a room of ex-colleagues and led back out, through the crowds, to the police van. Where would they send her? Where would she be held? She wanted answers and she wanted rest and she wanted Sergio back in her arms where she could listen to his ridiculous apologies. Raquel was a woman with a long list of demands and a lot of bargaining chips that she wasn’t ready to use.


	4. Chapter 4

Sergio sat in the old apartment he had, for a short time, called home.He struggled to recognise the place he had once known. He felt like a stranger; it was The Professor’s home, but never _his._ He wanted to forget that place and move on as fast as he could. The phone in his hand was his next step. He needed to tell the gang.

He dialled the number and hoped to high heaven that they would answer quickly. Seventy seconds for the police to hack the call. Sixty-five seconds to convey confidential information that they very much did not want to police hearing.

Someone picks up and all he can hear is yelling.

“Palermo?” The Professor begins. Amidst the shouts, he hears familiar voices that he can’t understand. “There’s no time, listen to me.”

“Call back later. Nairobi is down. The public opinion has turned because we shot a missile at the police. We are in a ceasefire of grief until Helsinki stops talking about self-sacrifice.”

Sergio takes less than a second to react to all of the information at once. It can be described in a simple word: horror. Alas, it lingers only a second before he regains control and speaks.

“Palermo! Lisbon is dead, too. Get out. Gather what you can and get out. Prepare for the escape and get the fuck out of there before they kill any more of us. I’ll call when I have more for you. Get everybody ready.”

“Understood.” For the first time in all these years, Sergio is grateful for the unbearably stoic reaction of Palermo. The job would get done and nobody else would be allowed to die. The phone line went dead at thirty-three seconds. There was nothing for them to trace. He would ditch the phone for security but they were stuck in the dark as far as he could tell.

Sergio hurtled the phone at the wall and listened to it smash into the wooden floor.He walked across the room and sat beside the battered mobile. He smashed it against the wall: one, two, three more times, until it was barely a phone at all. When he was satisfied, he smacked his head against the with a resounding thud.

“ _Mierda!_ ” He yelled, unafraid of who might hear him.

 _Nairobi is down._ It hadn’t sunk in yet, he was still processing and when it hit him, it felt like an eighteen-wheeler thrust itself into his chest. She was the best among them: all the sweetness and the optimism that a robber was capable of. She was only there to save Rio and now she was dead.

 _The public opinion has turned because we shot a missile at the police._ Somehow he had never thought of what their secret weapon was truly capable of. Robin Hood carried a bow and arrow for a reason, it seemed, and a missile launcher wasn’t the humble weapon of a poor man stealing from the rich.

 _Lisbon is dead._ Nothing mattered quite at much as that to him. Sergio hated himself for ranking her death _above_ Nairobi’s but it was simply that he might have been able to bear the loss. To lose Raquel was unforeseen; she had been safe, she had been by his side every second, she’d never even gone inside the bank, and now her body was being held somewhere beyond his reach.

Everything was falling apart and the heart of the chaos laid the man called Suarez who had killed her.

 _They’ll be saved,_ Sergio thought. That was his plan now. He would save them all and he would hand himself in and he would let them tear him apart if it would end all of this. It would all be over soon.

He changed his clothes into those which he had concealed in the gap between the floorboards. A black hoodie and skinny blue jeans. He put his glasses into his pocket and slicked his hair back the best he could. It would have to do.

The crowds didn’t seem to notice him. Where once they have been rallying in support, now there were riots. He blended in amongst them and made his way, slowly but surely, to the building he was looking for.

In every corner of the city, they had useful contacts primed to help them. None, however, who could truly be trusted. Their plan had required Raquel and for the loss of her, he had prepared no contingency.

When he entered GSG, it felt like the biggest risk he’d ever taken. He took off the hoodie, leaving him only with the shirt and tie, and prayed to God that he might go unnoticed. By some miracle, he did. There wasn’t a soul in the foyer aside from a receptionist filing her nails with the phone pressed against her ear. Sergio made his way right up the stairs as though he owned the place.

The office was modest. It was empty save a few desks, fully decorated to appear used. The meeting room at the back, however, was what he was here for. A man receiving a hefty allowance had stocked it with high-end hardware akin to that he’d used for the Royal Mint. It was everything that he needed.

It took nine minutes to get into the bank’s cameras, it took another seven to establish a secure phone line, and by the time that half-an-hour had passed, he was as prepared as he’d ever imagined possible. The Professor was in control once again and the heist would go as smoothly as it could under his guidance.

It was time to get them out.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been three days, she believed. That was as many times as Inspector Alicia Sierra had arrived with her hair newly washed and tied back. It was hard to know for certain, and she feared she was being too generous in her estimations. As long as the Inspector remained pregnant however, she knew it hadn’t been _that_ long.

Raquel knew for a fact that the human body couldn’t last more than 91 hours without sleep before hallucinations took hold. It hadn’t been ninety-one hours if the exhaustion overwhelming her was an accurate measure.

She wasn’t frightened, not even slightly. They were still on Spanish soil; they could only use tactics that were easy to lie about. Preying on her willpower was one thing, her pain tolerance, however, stretched beyond their wildest justifications. She knew desperation but was yet to meet despair.

Alicia wore the same outfit each time she came to visit. It was a clever trick to make Raquel doubt her own comprehension of time. She might not approve of such behaviour but she was glad all the same that she’d been paying attention when the academy taught them such things.

The same pencil skirt, stretched taught over her bump. The same crisp white blouse, so white in fact that Raquel doubted that it could be the same one each day. The same black heels that brought her to a towering 5’11; Raquel might have been intimidated if only she had the strength to stand.

“Are you ready?” Alicia asked each time she stepped into the cage-like room with a condescending glare upon her face. “Ready to tell me what you know, Raquel?”

The timing felt right. From the first phase - complete contention - into the next: a ploy of helplessness. She would tug upon their heartstrings and wait until they let a secret slip.

“I know nothing,” Raquel would answer. She had started to believe it, started to force the truth into the deepest reaches of her mind where she couldn’t reach it. “They never told me anything. I don’t know anything.”

The Inspector tutted at her as if chastising a child. She knew how to make people feel small, how to make them feel insignificance, she knew the weaknesses of strangers. _She’s far too good at this,_ Raquel thought.

“You expect me to believe that, Lisbon? You’re one of _them._ You know everything there is to know.”

 _One of them._ If only she had been. She was a liability and nothing more. She’d gotten herself captured. _El punto mas debil,_ Sergio had admitted it. She’d almost been their ruin, she still might be.

“I gave myself that name and made them use it. I was nothing to them. I wanted to believe I was one of them, but I never could have been. I’m _his,_ and that goes against every rule.”

There was a quiver in her voice, delicately set to earn her a glimmer of pity. They were hoping to see a broken, betrayed woman. That is what they would get.

“They never trusted me, none but him. He would never risk the plan, not for something so inconsequential as love. I betrayed the force, why not betray them too? Would you trust the woman who brought death to two among your ranks, Alicia?” It was nought but an act and yet, with no answers, she found herself dwelling on them in the empty hours.

Alicia never stayed very long. She knew the solitude was far better than she at making a person feel desperate. Every time, she asked her questions and she led the conversation until Raquel had worked herself back into the corner of denial where she found comfort. Each day, she was left with the flood lights glaring and _Pinocho_ playing on a loop.

In the noise and the brightness, Raquel buried herself in the fading sureties of her own mind. Three hours, that’s what she had said to him; with the promise of his love, she could endure three hours, but it had been longer than that and she was starting to struggle.

She thought of Tokyo and of Nairobi and of Stockholm. She thought of Helsinki and of Denver. She thought even of Palermo, though it gave her a headache. She thought of everything but _him._

 _He thinks I am dead._ It hurt too much. The silence that followed the gunshots still haunted her. The crunch of the earpiece under her boot as she was forced to abandon him. The image that haunted her mind of how angry he had been when they had argued.

Getting a message to Sergio would be challenge enough, but she had a plan of her own. She knew when to act and she knew what to do. Now she only needed to wait.

The thought of Paula and her mother kept her sane. Alicia would tell her as soon as they’d been caught, she would tease her with it every second like some wicked game. She could’ve let madness take her in her loyalty, but for her family, she would hold firm.

“Are you ready?” Alicia asked. Raquel’s answers were freshly adorned with lies of the most passionate kind. A truth of its own was borne of the deceit. She prayed she would forget, but still, it lingered. She knew where Sergio would be right now. She knew where they would all flee once the job was done. She knew every minute detail.

It mattered not. Her loyalty exceeded beyond her control. She couldn’t have betrayed them if she wanted to. There were moments when she wished she could, moments when she woke with a start to a sore neck and Inspector Sierra at the door.

All she could do was hope for their safety. They would flee for Portugal and wait for flights to be arranged. All of them, her family too, out of harm’s way. She could survive anything if she had that to hold on to.

 _As long as they are all well,_ she told herself. _Nothing can hurt me more than the loss of them._


	6. Chapter 6

It was unnerving to him, to speak to her alone, without Raquel’s sense to keep him grounded. He was far too distracted to think straight. He needed _her_ to make it work and without her, the plan would be foiled. He’d often thought, in their time on Palawan, that they might’ve all died at the Royal Mint was it not for Raquel. If she had betrayed them, they would all have been locked away with Rio for these past months. He thanked God for her loyalty.

Sergio recognised his recklessness as soon as the words were out of his mouth. He knew what he was risking but he couldn’t bring himself to care. _They’ll hate me,_ he thought. _I have broken my rules and they have broken me in turn._

“We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Alicia uttered so easily he wondered if she was reading from a script.

“It seems then, as negotiator, you must be looking for new work. I’d invite you to join us but our life doesn’t bode well for turncoats it seems.”

It was an agony to be witty. He was stuck in the tight space between having forgotten how to be The Professor and having forgotten how to be Sergio without Raquel. He wasn’t sure how to be anyone at all.

“She’s worth _that_ much to you?” Alicia teased cruelly.

“This could end it all. You do realise that, yes? Thirty-nine live human beings for one corpse. Why hesitate?”

It sounded ridiculous. Handing over all that for something that amounted to nothing. It wasn’t what he’d intended but when she’s said that Raquel would be _kept_ until all of this was over, Sergio had lost all sense of reason. He thought of Marivi and of Paula, of the grief they would feel and of the longing they would know until they had put her to rest away from all the chaos.

“Why _don’t_ you?” asked Alicia. “Do your co-conspirators know how easily you’ve thrown them over for your forsaken love?”

 _She’s smart,_ he reminds himself as though he might have forgotten. She could tear it all to ribbons with a few carefully placed words. She was always in control and it reminded him of Raquel.

”You think I’d risk any of it upon your word? I’m many things, Inspector, careless to say the least, but I’m not stupid. The hostages are pawns, the game isn’t over when they leave the board, it’s only just getting started.”

The game was already over. Sergio was bargaining with chips that had already been set down. The bank would be empty, one way or the other, by dawn if all went well. He could do nothing but watch it all pan out. There was nothing left but smoke and mirrors to keep Alicia entertained.

He missed the vitriol. He longed to see Raquel roll her eyes as he pretended to flirt. He was desperate to feel the thrill of beating in his chest again. There was nothing left to fuel it, no passion lingering, only hope that by some miracle they’d all get out alive.

_Nairobi is dead. Raquel is dead. The heist is a shambles._

The hostages could take power if only they sought it out. Sergio imagined that mixed with the fear and the compliance, there remained only pity. He wanted to let them all go with the wind at their backs and call it a done deal. All his passion was drained out of him and his only lingering desire was that it was ended.

 _Let them go,_ Sergio wanted to say. They wouldn’t hear him. They wouldn’t listen to a word he said. They thought him mad with grief, they weren’t wrong to think it.

Support had grown upon the streets. They vengeance had founded a revolution. It would come to nought; they might flee with a fraction of the gold but it would still feel like surrender. They were cowards if they didn’t die like martyrs were supposed to. Moscow and Berlin and Oslo and Nairobi, they had all played their part.

“I can’t give you what you want, Professor.” Her tone shifted. It caught him offguard. _Can’t._ She wasn’t in control. There was something she wasn’t telling him. He could sense it: an uncertainty.

“There’s nothing you _can’t_ do, Inspector.”

She was at the heart of it all. Alicia was grasping tighter each day to the plan she had conjured up and yet this, it felt like something else. It made him nervous in the same way that Raquel used to. The loss of control is, to an egomaniac, the greatest disaster.

“Touche!” She answered just a fraction too quick. “I _won’t.”_

It drew suspicion that he couldn’t explain. Something was going on, he was absolutely certain, but he wasn’t sure quite what. The Professor would figure it out. He always did.

“ _Ciao, inspectora._ ”

He killed the line and wondered whether she would regret her stubbornness. He found himself wondering a lot about the lengths that she would go to and the ideas she would allow to breathe. It unnerved him to think of all that recklessness with a government behind it. There really was nothing she couldn’t do.

He’d watched Alicia for years before the Royal Mint. He knew the secrets of every member of Madrid’s police force. He’d calculated every single variable and he’d thought her to be one of the most unpredictable. He’d worried about her sharp mind as he’d worried about Raquel’s hidden genius. Sergio had not left a single possibility unaccounted for: nothing save the actions of his heart.

The gang needed to be updated. Sergio needed to call them again.


	7. Chapter 7

When Alicia arrived for the fifth time, Raquel wondered whether she would ask the same questions. Raquel intended to answer her one way or another. The loyal lover was a character that no longer seemed to entertain Alicia; where the first time she had scoffed at Raquel’s words and rolled her eyes, now she only seemed to draw closer to the end of her tether with each breath Raquel drew. It was time to switch it up.

She had planned for this. Though Sergio had told her not to worry about things that he would never allow to happen, she had planned for it. What she had _not_ planned for, however, was dealing with the fact that Sergio believed she was dead and so would not, by any measure, be trying to find her.

Worrying herself about what _could_ happen in the immeasurable future wasn’t beneficial to her current state and so she stopped herself.

Phase Two: Hopelessness. The only way she was ever going to gain any information was by making them forget that she was a threat. _Una mujer que se ha pasado a_ ñ _os teniendole miedo a todo._ She would garner their pity, then she would garner their trust.

“Raquel,” Alicia greeted as she sat herself opposite. “Are you ready to talk to me?”

There was something so discomforting about her. It was nothing short of talent to be able to make a person feel guilty of the world’s greatest crimes, even when their conscience is clear. It was hard to believe that she hadn’t finished all of this already, that she _wouldn’t_ finish it; Raquel truly did believe that.

“I’ll talk to you, Inspector.” Raquel offered in a croaky voice. Her throat was unbearably dry but she refused the refreshments they brought to her every few hours. She didn’t _truly_ think that they were laced with anything but she was unwilling to take the risk. “What do you want to know?”

“What’s changed?” Alicia looked as close to gleeful as anybody had ever seen her in thirty years. “Why now when you’ve been so stubborn? Have you finally accepted that you’d like to be on the right side of history, that you’d like a life with your daughter before she gets old enough to realise what you are and leave you to rot?”

Raquel had spent far too much of her own time considering that possibility. There was nothing that could get under her skin anymore, nothing save threatening those she loved. She had learned a great deal of endurance and found that there was little other people might say to her that she hadn’t said to herself before.

“Maybe I’m just bored,” Raquel answered. “Maybe the thought of spending the rest of my life in a room just like this, without even _you_ to brighten my day has made me think more sensibly.”

It didn’t satisfy Alicia. She knew it wouldn’t. Sincerity was her catnip, and Sergio had committed a great deal of time to educate Raquel on the art of deception. _So you can tell when I’m lying to you,_ he had said and she had considered utterly forgettable information.

“Maybe I’ve realised that he was better off without me. _Clearly,_ he chose a better-skilled team…none of them allowed themselves to get caught.”

That was the truth, or near enough that she could make it stick. She’d allowed herself to wonder whether she was good enough for him for a long time and she’d come to the conclusion that it was his decision to make. Still, she thought about it from time to time. _Te gane la partida, Raquel._ She wondered whether she was a burden to him.

“But you love him?”

“More than I ever thought possible.”

“What a pity, to see a woman so in love with a man who forgot all about her the moment she got herself killed.”

Raquel furrowed her brow. It was a game, she knew that, but Alicia was an exceptionally talented player and she found herself doubting her own ability to determine truth from a lie. It had been so offhand, so simple, and she had been looking straight ahead when she said it.

Was it true? Not that it truly mattered, he might have forgotten her in death but she was alive and she was going to make certain that he was aware of that fact. She would not be left behind by the man who had promised her the rest of their lives. She refused to be humiliated by a man more than once.

“Feeding me lies is not the way to get me to trust you, if you want the truth, you can spare me the same courtesy,” Raquel uttered with well-performed confidence. “Tell me what he really said and I will give you my honesty.”

It meant nothing to her to make deals with the enemy. Nor did it mean anything to her to lie to people who were undeserving of the truth. Where once there had been good and bad in the mind of Raquel Murillo, now there was only _us_ and _them._

“ _Cómo reaccionará el público ante dos asesinatos a sangre fría en un dia?_ ” Alicia recited as though she had committed it to memory. Raquel took a moment to process the words and her confusion went unmasked. “You and Nairobi were just players in his game. You might have been his queen, but the king must continue playing.”

 _That_ was a lot easier to believe. The man she had fallen for was a strategist above all else. Raquel refused to take it personally that he might continue to function after her death. He owed no loyalty to a corpse; if her life was not enough to rear his commitment, however, there would be hell to pay.

 _Nairobi_ , she thought, _sweet, sweet Nairobi._ If they were going to kill somebody, why did it have to be her? For a moment she wished she was dead, she wished she might escape this fresh knowledge and erase it from her memory.

“I believe you owe me some answers.” Her stomach wailed hollowly and she found herself wishing she had been tempted by the stale bread she’d been offered. “Tell me, Raquel: whose idea was it to rob the Bank of Spain? It wasn’t The Professor’s, of that, I’m sure. Far too aggressive, far too territorial, far too passionate. Was it _yours?_ ”

“Oh, Alicia, what a fool you have been,” Raquel chided. “You’ve killed your best hope of finishing all of this. You’ve killed the only one with the power to backtrack. It was Nairobi’s plan.” 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer comes now that this is not at all how I imagine the heist will end, nor is it how I want it to end but I do not have the brains of either El Profesor or the writer's rooms to make a satisfactory ending to this plotline. There is no commitment to canon compliance in terms of the trailer, I only picked out what I wanted to use for this piece and held onto it. I'm focused on the Serquel future here and the rest is just filler to make things run more smoothly.

He was early in calling them to check how things were going. He was getting impatient watching them go about their lives as though they weren’t in the middle of a robbery and so he called them, if only to stir them from their perches.

“ _Profesor,_ ” Palermo greeted cordially. “ _cómo va tu día?_ ”

 _“_ Palermo, what the hell are you playing at? You’re supposed to be out of there in eighteen hours and I’ve spent my afternoon watching you flirt with everything that breathes instead of _working.”_

The Professor boasted little patience. He had the temper of a poorly-reared child which was, in fact, rather a prompt description. All he asked of people was that which they had agreed to; Sergio was not a man of great needs and yet, those he trusted most continued to disappoint him.

“ _Profesor,_ all is well _._ ” The tone he took was condescending and Sergio wondered how he’d endured it for so long. “The twelve are well-hidden, nobody will know they were ever here until we are long gone. The trucks are almost fully loaded. We await your instruction.”

Frustrating as he was, Palermo certainly knew how to do his job. Sergio resented him for that, for his _abilities._ There was nothing in the world a man like that was incapable of, save it demanded the use of his brain. Sergio envied him as he had envied Andres. He was the sort of _man_ that Sergio wished he had been born to be, the sort of man who would’ve kept running and would’ve saved Raquel’s life and killed however many cops it took to _keep_ her safe.

“All looks good on the cameras; their attentions are focused on the public entrances, the delivery bay, and any tunnelling attempts we might make. The dolphin’s car park appears to have been overlooked. All eyes will be on the main frontal entrance and their numbers will already be depleted by the Merry Men. All you have to do is act normally and get out of the city as quickly as you can.”

It seemed too simple. It seemed like everything had fallen perfectly into place with no hiccoughs at all, and _that_ was a concern.

Sergio asked after Helsinki. He asked after Rio and Tokyo. Somewhere in all of this, there was a weak link, and he needed to figure out where. It was challenge enough to keep track ofso many criminal masterminds at once and to give them all the attention they needed, but to balance that with the attention he unwillingly dedicated to the two recently dead members of the team seemed impossible.

“Professor,” Palermo began in a tone that reminded him somehow of Andres. “Everything is going to be fine. You meet us tomorrow evening and all of this is over.”

He wouldn’t allow himself to be calm, for the next twenty-four hours he would remain as tense as he had been since the heist commenced and it would serve him well. He had to be prepared for anything.

Without warning, one camera then the next, all in a quick succession, cut out. No output from any of them. It wasn’t a glitch; Sergio was smart enough to know that no glitch would knock out all of the cameras at once. It was a targeted effort. 

“ _Palermo, he perdido las camaras del interior del banco. Estais solos._ ”

“ _Que?”_ The voice came loud and bounding through the speaker. “ _QUE MIERDA_?”

His rage often proved an inconvenience and was it not for the intelligence he hid so well behind his macho persona, Sergio might have given up all faith in him as a leader.

“Palermo, listen to me,” “I don’t know if the problem is out here or in there with you but I know what the likelihood is. _Find Rio._ And keep your mouth shut, you moron, we don’t need the whole world knowing that we’re blind right now. I have to go, you won’t hear from me again. Stick to the plan and all will go well.”

The Argentinian gave a non-committal grunt.

“ _Bueno suerte, signior._ ”

The line went dead and Sergio started working as fast as he could. There was no point hiding all evidence of his presence, if they were in the building then they knew already. He scheduled the video message to stream at 8am and wiped the computer hard disk and piled every document he could find into a box. Main doors closed at 8 so he would have to be a little more creative in his escape; it was only the first floor, he thought, he could survive that and, optimistically, break no bones.

It was not a problem for later. It was a problem for _right_ now. There was either somebody inside of the bank or there was somebody inside _GSG_ who wasn’t on their side. An enemy amongst their ranks was _not_ something that they had prepared for. There were no measures in place against internal threats.

Worst case scenario: there was somebody _inside_ of the bank working against them. Best case scenario: there was somebody in the same building as Sergio who know who he was and what he was doing there. Best case scenario meant he had to leave immediately.

He threw himself out of the window with no grace or decorum.It served him well, however; he landed atop the cardboard box which collapsed beneath his weight and softened his landing. On the small grass strip which skirted the building, he gave himself a few seconds to catch his breath before he stood and ran.

 _Plaza De Espa_ _ña_ was the nearest metro station and luckily for him, it had a public bathroom. He changed there, ditched the shirt he hadn’t changed in days and threw the red hoodie over his head. He would find a place to hide until the riots started. They _would_ start, he was certain, when the Madridian public heard that amongst them lived cold-blooded murderers.

The public was with them once again. It was the biggest heist in history and they had an entire city on their side.


	9. Chapter 9

Something was happening. There was a sense of chaos in the air and even locked away where she could deduce nothing, Raquel felt it.

It felt like it had been weeks since she had last seen Alicia. Eleven meals had been brought to her and she had rejected all eleven of them. There was nothing that could make her eat the poison they would try to shovel into her mouth. She drank the water that they offered though; dehydration wasn’t something that she wanted to face on top of everything else.

The same guard brought in her food each time and she wondered when he slept. She couldn’t remember his name. Ramirez came to mind, Rodriguez perhaps, definitely it started with an _r._

In front of her on the table, he set down a tray of bread and soup. She didn’t even acknowledge it.

“Eat!” he ordered. “Eat something or I’ll force it down your throat, _puta!_ ”

She scoffed at him. He reminded her a little of Alberto. There was no fear when she listened to his taunts, however, only pity for the fragility she recognised in him.

“Why?”

He snatched up the bread and tried to force it inside of her mouth. She stretched to flip the tray onto the floor and watched as the soup pooled on the floor and spread until it reached his boots. He sneered at her and threw the bread in anger.

“Listen, _mujer,_ I’m just trying to do my job. What’s your problem?”

Raquel chuckled at him. She knew the inner workings of his brain as he spoke to her, she understood precisely what he was thinking and knew exactly why.

“You think that once this is all over, after the national gold reserve is gone, after the department loses every cent of funding, you think you’ll get a raise for your fine civil duty? You’ll get fired. Everybody who worked on this operation will be thrown to the wolves, don’t you realise that?”

The officer glared at her like he wasn’t listening, but his dilated pupils told another story. It wasn’t news to him, Raquel was sure. Everyone with a brain knew that to fail on such an integral mission would be the end of any self-respecting cop’s career. It would the end for a man like _him_ at the least, a man who was there for the money and the status, a man with no interest in the ethics of his job.

His silence was not final, it was impatient. She could read the way he looked at her and saw him losing interest, so she continued.

“You earn what, €50,000? 50,000 euros is the price they’re willing to pay for all of your hard work, for all that unlogged overtime, for all that stress.” Raquel wondered what she’d ever been doing there, selling her soul to an organisation just because she believed they were the good guys. “I’ll give you €500,000 to deliver a simple message for me. Nothing illegal, nothing immoral, just a few simple words.”

It wasn’t a difficult trade. There was no act of persuasion. She simply offered him a deal and he pounced at it like any fool looking for a secret to keep from his colleagues. Raquel wondered if there had been men like that working at her side for years, if any remnants of loyalty might be found among the police force. From the other side of the line, she was glad she had such passionless peers.

“How?” There was no flicker of doubt in his tone. Remarkable how quickly those who’d called her traitor were ready to betray their ethics for the right price, she thought.

“I’ll give you a phone number and you’ll call it. Call from a payphone if you don’t want to get caught when all of this is over, and don’t try handing this to your superiors; they don’t care where a burner phone is thrown after its one and only use.” Raquel wondered if he was foolish enough to try and feed this information back in the hopes of some workplace appreciation. “You can’t double-cross me, you can do this and get paid, or you can go and tell your commanding officer and pray she doesn’t strangle you for humouring me even this far.” 

He clenched his jaw and set the napkin, now slightly sodden at one corner, down in front of her. The pen he withdrew from his pocket could be considered a deadly weapon and he definitely shouldn’t have handed it to her without drawing his gun, but he didn’t seem fazed by her.

She scrawled the number on the napkin and slid it towards him, tapping emphatically upon the word.

“‘ _Nuestro aliado Lisboa_ ’,” she stated. “I don’t care what you say. I don’t care if you threaten them or befriend them or tell them your wet dreams, just use that phrase somehow, understood?”

Ramirez or Rodriguez or whatever the fuck his name was grunted at her and she smirked at him.

It surprised her that he hadn’t tried to haggle for more money. It surprised her that he hadn’t asked for insurance of a sort. _He_ surprised her but then, she no longer knew what to expect from the organisation that she had once known so well.

Half a million euros was play money to her now. If it all went well, Sergio would try to give the man a lifetime salary of a million euros a month. Prosperity had blessed her with the power to negotiate all things, she had all the bargaining chips that she would need for the rest of her life. Anybody who knew the first thing about the Royal Mint heist knew that though they were robbers, they were robbers with integrity.

“Eat something, _mujer,_ before you die.”

Raquel scoffed at him. She wasn’t going to die. She was far too stubborn to die of anything so pathetic as starvation when there were people who wanted her dead. She was going to survive and she was going to find Sergio Marquina if only to kill him for even _suggesting_ that she betray him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again with the disclaimers, I know, but I just want to say that I have no solid theories on how they're going to escape hence why my writing on the subject is pretty vague and pretty unfocused. I massively support the theory that they'll all somehow fake their deaths so that they can get away clean but I didn't have any precise ideas that I could write out.

Already they were moving out of the bank. The vehicles were loaded and the path was clear ahead of them, all they had to do was get their timing right and they would sneak right under the police’s noses a second time. Sergio had preyed upon their ignorance every step of the way and soon they would realise what fools they had been.

He had hope that everything was running smoothly though there was no certainty at all left in his mind. They had gotten ahead of them once, he feared that they were closer than he had imagined but he tried to keep faith that his gang was smarter than theirs.

When the video went live at 9am, the city came to life in a way Sergio had never seen before. It was not the Madrid he had known these past years, it was a place full of hope and anger and the power of the people. In the streets, people held pickets over their heads. _Vive la revolución!_

Was this the new age he’d been waiting for all his life? He could die happy knowing that the world was starting to see what was really going on behind closed doors. _Comer los ricos!_ He wondered would it not do the movement some good to have a martyr. The egomaniac in him thought just how incredible his legacy would be if he let himself die to become a symbol of great change. The rationalist in him thought it would be an awful lot easier to die rather than waiting around to watch the people forget what they had risen for and return to their bitter normality.

There was nothing for him to do but wait patiently and try not to get himself caught. He stood among the crowds: half _with_ him, half against though it was hard to tell the difference. He watched along with them, as clueless as they all saved for the plan he hoped they were sticking to.

He would wait for the doors to open and then he would flee from among their ranks. The chaos that would come was not something he hoped to witness.

When his phone rang, he panicked. They ought to be loading already, there shouldn’t be any time left for updates…or for problems. He shoved his way through the crowds to a clearing and answered the phone.

_“Si?”_

The heavy breathing at the other end of the line told him it wasn’t Marseille. It wasn’t anyone charged with the urgency of escaping the police force. He listened intently.

”You think you’re going to win, but there’s no winning, professor. Spain has allies everywhere. France, Germany, _Lisbon,_ Italy. They’ll catch you if you run. Take your time. There’s no hurry.”

The line went dead before he could say a word. He knew what it meant. He heard her name and he knew that by some miracle, she was alive. The police didn’t have the burner directory. _Nobody_ could contact him now save those inside the bank. _Nobody,_ yet somebody with voice distortion software and one of their greatest secrets had figured out how to.

There wasn’t a soul who knew her codename. The others? Many of the hostages had spoken of their experiences, but _her?_ She was known by the media as The Inspector. She was known by _everybody_ as The Inspector.

Raquel was alive. He knew not how but he was certain.

“ _Perdón!_ ” He charged through the bustling crowds. He wore a Dali mask and a red hoodie and it was the best he could do to blend in amongst to those strangers. “ _Perd_ _ó_ _neme!”_

It was hard to push against the tide of the people but still, Sergio made it through somehow. He stopped at the back of the crowd and glanced back to see the bank’s doors open.

The hostages spilt out through the doors first. He wondered if they would be obedient and stay where they were asked, or if they would try to run. It didn’t matter either way but it would look an awful lot better if they played their part.

Nobody thought to count them. Not one among the hundred armed officers that drew a tight perimeter on the building thought to count the hostages right there and then. Instead, they bound their attention on the eight that lingered in the doorway; armed, masked, dressed in red jumpsuits.

Sergio might have pondered their foolishness if he wasn’t in such a hurry. He paced quickly through the streets and turned into a multi-storey carpark. The lift took him to the top floor and he unlocked a silver Seat Ibiza which sat in the corner.

He prayed all would run smoothly. The streets were rammed with every armed force that the nation could muster at such short notice and it seemed that very little of their attention remained on the bank itself. For miles, there were pavements lined with gun-wielding soldiers of one kind or another.

 _“Los ladrones parecen haberse dado por vencidos,”_ the radio told him as he drove through the busy city centre. “ _cuarenta y siete individuos enmascarados han salido del Banco de España.”_

What fools they are, he thought, to believe it would be so easy to capture them. He wondered if Alicia Sierra believed just like the rest of them or if she was arguing with Prieto at that very moment. He didn’t care. They all would be out in a matter of minutes if they weren’t gone already.

Fifteen minutes ago, this had been the final phase. All of this should have been over by the time they reached the Portuguese border and flew to Tunisia. One last hurrah before they never saw one another again. Alas, it was far from over now, they all would save Lisbon as they had saved Rio, and should they refuse, The Professor had a plan in place. 

_Lisbon_ was alive and he wasn’t going to risk losing her.


	11. Chapter 11

Alicia stormed into the room with fresh panic. All is well, Raquel thinks, if she’s so angry, they have escaped.

“Raquel, tell me what the plan was. Tell me where they’re all going to go and I might just let them live,” she teased. Raquel had to swallow her laughter. The bitch didn’t even realise that she’d already lost. “Those decoys didn’t keep us occupied for very long, we won’t be played by you. Tell me where they’ve gone!”

 _The decoys had worked._ She felt pride for a moment that she had played a part in their escape. How much time had they bought them though? Alicia was losing control; it was plain to see in the way she had hurried in so ready to tell Raquel every detail of what was going on outside. She was losing her grasp on the situation, and at the crucial moment, there was nothing she could do but pray that somehow she might persuade her hostage to give her the truth.

Raquel smirked at her freely. There was no hiding the relief she felt at hearing those words. Alicia was truly afraid she might lose for the first time.

“How long have they been gone?” she sniggered, pursing her lips to stop from laughing. “Do you even _know?_ ”

 _“_ The hostages were released almost 150 minutes ago. They can’t have left Spain yet. We’re tracking any movement in our airspace so they can’t have flown out, we’ve put a red alert on all border crossings and ports. He’s still here, Raquel, just tell me where. _”_

 _Over two hours._ They’d had plenty of time to get away. They’d be out of European airspace for certain. She could tell Alicia exactly where they were headed and still she’d never find them. She _could_ betray them right there and then and they’d stop looking for her daughter and they’d stop threatening to lock her away for the rest of her life and all she’d have to do was lie a little about the timing, a little about the route.

Sergio would forgive her. He wouldn’t even think to hold it against her. He would be angrier if she chose not to, yet she couldn’t bring herself to do it.The thought of telling Alicia a word of truth brought bile into her throat. Though Tokyo continued to doubt her, she was lacking in many things, but Raquel had loyalty in spades.

“Did you bring all of the hostages into custody?”

She was depending heavily upon her ability to improvise. They had dabbled with such an idea early on though it had never really stuck. They could rely upon the public to abandon the government but to expect them to prove loyal to dangerous strangers was too great a risk.

“They were taken to receive medical aid and to be reunited with their families,” Alicia answered with a frown. “They aren’t the criminals, I know your understanding of ethics is a little confused now but they’re innocent.”

“ _All_ of them _?”_

That was all it took. Three words to bring the world tumbling down over their heads. Three words to make Inspector Sierra scream so loudly, the guards waiting outside thought she had entered pre-term labour.

“ _Cuarenta y siete individuos enmascarados,_ ” Raquel stated, “ _treinta y nueve & ocho, tu entiendes?_”

She wondered how Alicia had been so stupid. Forty-seven identically dressed people entering a crowd of hundreds of people dressed exactly the same as them. Forty-seven people to keep track of. When they look like ducks and they quack like ducks, there are probably some ducks hidden among them.

“Raquel, are you saying they’re still in Madrid?” There was desperation in her tone now. There was a pleading that had never made itself apparent before that very moment. It was hard to imagine that the steely woman who had killed Nairobi could be so helpless now.

“You gave them _two hours,_ Alicia. They could be partying in Ibiza by now,”Raquel pointed out. “I’ve told you before that the Professor never told us anything that we didn’t need to know and I wasn’t lying. I don’t _know_ where they’re going. Just as nobody knew after the Royal Mint, nobody will know where anybody else is going. _He_ planned it all, step by step, and he accepted the possibility that one among us may be taken hostage. The only way to protect yourself from betrayal to protect others from the truth.”

Alicia doubted her and it was an entirely warranted reaction. Nobody in their right mind would believe that after admitting to knowing every intricacy of the plan, she would have been kept in the dark about its ending. Still, it was a truth she could stick to unwaveringly. They could point a gun at her head and she would say it like it was truth, until she believed it was truth.

“Raquel, I don’t believe you.”

It was the response she had expected. It was the only thing that truly made any sense. If they had believed her, she would’ve thought them insane.

“Why would I lie, Alicia?” Lisbon snapped. “He’s _gone._ He _left._ They all left and they’re all safe. They’ve all gone to make new lives for themselves and I’m stuck in here just trying to make sure you don’t kill my mother or my daughter when they have _nothing_ to do with this.”

 _That_ was truth. There was nothing that mattered to her now more than ensuring the safety of her family. There was nothing else for her to think about. Still, the question stuck in her mind as it stuck in Alicia’s. _Why lie?_ Why could she not bring herself to answer honestly? Why could she not betray him even now?

“Then tell me everything you know,” Alicia ordered, and in giving her some facets of the truth, she found the lies had a life of their own.

“We would meet at the car park - I don’t know where it was but it was within walking distance of the bank - and we would all drive different routes to the same place, an airfield I presume but he never told us. We wouldn’t find out until we were about to leave the city. We would drive there and we would say our goodbyes and then we would go our separate ways.”


	12. Chapter 12

When the call is made to confirm that they are all well clear of the bank, Sergio lets himself relax for just a second. The hardest part of all of this would be reloading without getting caught by the police. It was going to be the make it or break it moment they had all prepared for.

They met at an abandoned aircraft hangar and started throwing gold into five different cars. Between the nine of them, they would not take it all for themselves. The heist had not been one seeking wealth but seeking to start a revolution on an unprecedented scale. One-third of the national reserve was worth approximately €4.5 billion.

They would take 750lb in each vehicle which summed to a million each to travel with. Sergio’s contacts would ensure that fifty per cent of it was sold and the profits split half and half between themselves and the robbers, wired to untraceable bank accounts. The remaining forty-eight per cent would be littered across the Spanish nation for the population to claim their share.

“Reunions later, we have to keep moving. We don’t know how long those decoys will keep the police occupied for. Start loading into each of the cars,” Sergio commanded and opened up the backs of the two trucks to see 85 tonnes of gold piled up.It was something of a miracle that they had made it all the way here carrying such a heavy load but he had hoped that they might endure the journey.

He could tell that everyone was losing patience but he didn’t care. The heist wasn’t over until they all were safe and rich for the rest of their lives. With everybody working overtime, it only took ten minutes and everything was ready.

“We will meet at the airfield in Alcantara and from there, we will wait eighteen hours to make them believe we have already left the country by boat or by land. Everybody buddy up with a driving partner and make sure you all stick to your own routes; I don’t care if there’s traffic and I don’t care if you just want to get there, the police will notice if two cars are driving in the same direction for 300km.

“What about the rest of the gold? Where is it all going to go?” Rio asked and I realised only at that moment that I hadn’t seen the boy in years. All of this had been for him and he was safe.

“The gold was not the objective of this heist. _You_ were. I have some people coming to collect the loot and take very good care of it for us. It’s not our concern already, we already have more money than we can spend in our entire lives.”

In the back of his head, he could hear Nairobi’s teasing. _Is that a challenge?_ It felt so strange to be in that moment without her. She had been there since the very beginning and she wasn’t there to witness the end. It broke his heart a little.

Everybody piled into the cars and Rio, after realising he was stuck with Marseille for company on the long journey to Alcantara, climbed into the passenger seat of the Land Rover. As three cars left the hangar, The Professor let himself wonder how easily everyone would be persuaded to risk it all for Raquel. He hoped they would come willingly.

“ _Profesor, donde estan tus amigos?_ ” Bogota asked. He sat in the driver’s seat of the car that he and Palermo would share.

There was a sense of great impatience among them. It was understandable and yet it managed to get under Sergio’s skin the way they seemed so unbothered with the formalities. It wasn’t that they didn’t understand the importance of these procedures, it was simply that they had no respect for them.

 _Go then,_ he wanted to say. He wanted to watch them all walk off into the sunset with their €1 million and see how long it would take them to get caught. They might have been smart but they were reckless first. To them, it was just the same as any other robbery, they didn’t seem to completely comprehend the stakes.

A car pulled into the hangar and Palermo straightened up as if it might make him look threatening. The car pulled up and out came two burly men, both armed to the teeth. The larger of the two shook Sergio’s hand and headed straight to the driver’s cab. The slightly smaller seemed not to acknowledge them at all, instead walking straight to the rear of the van where he looked, awestruck, at the loot.

The deal had been made. For the money they were getting, they would not dare to betray The Professor. They drove off into the Spanish countryside, where exactly he knew not, and he thought not on the matter as he began the long drive to the border.

As he drove, he thought only of her.Where she was and what she was doing and how well they had kept her. He worried so much that it made his head hurt and that just made him worry more; his clouded thoughts would do nothing for the plan he was trying carefully to construct. That was all he needed. If the others believed he had a plan and they believed it as well thought out like all the others, they wouldn’t need a great deal of persuasion.

Every thirty minutes, he turned on the radio to listen to the news bulletin and each time, it remained almost the same. The police were still in pursuit of who they believed to be the robbers and the riots in the streets continued without an end in sight. He was only a few miles away when the news was released that the _actual_ robbers had absconded and that anyone found to have provided aid to them would be considered an accomplice.

 _Time’s up, Alicia._ They all were beyond her reach for the time being, yet the feeling of relief was yet to wash over him. He would have to walk right back into the lion’s den if to ensure Raquel’s safety.


	13. Chapter 13

When Alicia walked into the room, Raquel was at once aware that something had changed. There was routine to the way that Alicia behaved with her and it all revolved around never allowing herself to look as though she _needed_ Raquel. Even in her hour of greatest need, she had tried, no matter how ineffectively, to maintain calm. She looked as though she hadn’t slept in days and the stress of the case was wearing heavy on her.

“Ms. Murillo, I have some rather troubling news for you,” Alicia began. “News I think you might find interesting.”

The space between them was smaller now. As she had slowly earned the trust of the officers who guarded her and of Alicia, they had forgotten to be cautious. She was no longer handcuffed in the room where she was kept, they had given her a cot to sleep on, they allowed her to eat with a knife and fork. If she’d wanted to strangle Alicia and leave her for dead, she could’ve done it and there would’ve been nobody to stop her. Murder wasn’t something so easy to run away from, and so she restrained herself.

Alicia drew her phone out of her pocket, unlocked it, and set it down on the table between the two of them. She glanced at Raquel like she was waiting for her to say something but she was met only with silence.

She drew a deep, wavering breath and pressed the play button on her phone screen.

“You can’t trick me, Alicia. If she’s dead, you made a weak attempt at luring me back. If she’s alive, I can’t risk any more lives for her. She’s smart. She’ll find her own way out.”

It was his voice. She could tell it wasn’t him; he’d never use those words nor would he say those things but it was _his_ voice. 

“He knows you’re alive, how did that happen, Inspectora? How did he find out about our little secret?” Alicia sneered but Raquel couldn’t focus on her questions. “Am I employing traitors?”

She knew it wasn’t him. She knew it in her heart but it was _his_ voice and she couldn’t think of anything else. There was no explanation save that she had fallen for a man she didn’t truly know. She knew he wouldn’t abandon her and yet she couldn’t bring herself to believe it.

“That was Sergio…” she mumbled so quietly Alicia didn’t hear her words. “He’s not coming to get me. He’s not even going to try. He’s given up on me.”

“Inspector, tell me how he knew,” Alicia demanded.

Raquel couldn’t think straight. She _knew_ it wasn’t him. She _knew_ it wasn’t, but then how had Alicia learned that he knew she was alive? How had she come to know that there was a traitor somewhere amongst her ranks? She didn’t understand it. She didn’t understand any of it and she wanted answers.

“He didn’t. I- I thought he would have come for me the moment that he knew. I was waiting. I hadn’t done anything yet. I was worried he’d abandon the heist if he knew I was alive. I was waiting to tell him once it all was over,” she rambled anxiously. “How did he find out? Did you tell him? Did you send him the message so he would believe it was a lie?”

There wasn’t a clear thought in her mind. Everything felt like chaos and she couldn’t make sense of it. He would never have said that. He would never say that she wasn’t worth the risk. It went against every ridiculous, chivalrous impulse he had.

“ _No me mienta, Inspectora._ ” 

Raquel feared what would come of this. She feared what Alicia would do. All she could do was try to make Alicia believe that she was clueless. It would be a great trial to convince her of anything so unlikely but she would try all the same.

It made her feel sick. As much as she liked to tease Sergio for being a control freak, she too was reluctant to give over the reins. This not-knowing would send her insane if she had to dwell in it for long. She might be able to handle losing him. She _might_ survive that if she had her freedom and her family and the truth. She needed the truth more than anything else at that moment.

He had promised her the rest of their lives. Had he not meant it? Raquel’s mind was clouded with doubts that she had never, up until that moment, entertained.

Sergio had been ready to hand himself over to save her. He’d been ready to give up everything, the entire heist, all that they had worked for, just to protect her. Was it all a ruse? He had surely known that she would never give him up but why pretend?

“RAQUEL!” Alicia snapped and suddenly she remembered that she wasn’t alone. “Your heartbreak is of no interest to me, tell me how he knew.”

Her mind was running a hundred miles an hour. There was no contingency plan. Alicia was never supposed to find out. Sergio was never supposed to warn her that he was coming. None of this was supposed to happen.

“I don’t know, I swear. Do you think I would’ve risked that? Telling him that I was alive without sending proof that it was me, it sounds like the scheme of an amateur. I’m many things, Inspector, but I’m not that.”

It took another hour of interrogation to make Alicia believe that it wasn’t her. There weren’t an abundance of other options. Yet, when she left, she seemed quite satisfied that Raquel was as clueless as she.

In the solitude, Raquel was left to wonder what was truth amongst the lies. Her rational thought told her that it couldn’t have been him. The heist was over. Why would he risk sending a traceable message just to say he wasn’t going to respond? The heist was over and he would be on another continent by now.


	14. Chapter 14

Five cars each parked at least half a mile away from each other. Sergio was the last to arrive by only a few minutes, but he knew that every minute counted while they remained on Spanish soil. They all convened in a small church, unoccupied, to debrief. Twelve hours needed to pass before they could fly out or they would be shot out of the sky and that was twelve hours in which to reflect.

“ _Profesor!_ ” Stockholm exclaimed and was the first to wrap him a tight hug as he stepped inside. After her, came the rest, Tokyo and Rio and Denver. The men resorted to cheerful backslaps and in a flash, everyone was reacquainted as though they’d never been apart.

Rio brandished a case of red wine which The Professor decided not to ask about and started pouring glasses for everybody. Sergio wondered if he shouldn’t let them get a little drunk first, to ease the news, but they would only react irrationally with wine in their veins.

“Friends, I have something I must tell you all,” The Professor opened reluctantly. _“Lisboa está viva.”_

Rio stopped pouring. The entire chapel fell still. Eight pairs of eyes looked at him in complete bewilderment and confusion.

“When Lisbon was found by the police, I heard an altercation between her and an officer called Suarez which ended with a gunshot. It killed the connection and I thought that gunshot was the end of it, that’s what they wanted me to think. This morning I received a phone call saying that Lisbon was waiting. It was to the burner number which _nobody_ other than we ten know. She’s alive and they’re holding her somewhere.” Everyone looked gobsmacked. “Here’s the tricky part: I’m asking you all to help me break her out.”

Immediately, there is squabbling and disagreement that he can’t keep control of. They all had been in such close proximity for the past five days and they were driving one another mad. He waited patiently for silence to fall over them once again.

“Why are we here if not because we are loyal to one another? We are more than a gang, people, or we would have left Rio to rot in a cell for the rest of his days. Just as we rescued him, we must rescue her.” The Inspector spoke with such immovable confidence that nobody would dare say no to him outright.

A doleful quiet overtook the room and everybody seemed lost in their own minds.

“Professor, it’s different. You love her and she’s proved herself but we can’t risk our lives again. We already lost somebody.” He had not expected Helsinki to be the first among them to speak. He had come to learn that nothing could be properly anticipated when it came to the volatile individuals he made covenants with.

“You’re right, Helsinki. It is different. Rio admitted that he would’ve sold me out, he would’ve sold us _all_ out if he’d had the information that Alicia wanted. The difference is that Lisbon knows, she knows every detail of this plan better than any of you and she still hasn’t sold us out. They had her at gunpoint and she didn’t say a word.”

Nobody could argue with that. Nobody could pretend that there was a soul _more_ deserving of their loyalty than Lisbon. Nobody would dare to tell him that she was still a cop in their minds.

“What if we say no? What if we don’t want to dive straight back into the chaos for a woman we barely know?” Marseille interjected and The Inspector gave him a measured look.

“You go. You leave right now with your €1 million of gold and you run, and if you survive for long enough without getting caught or killed then your share of the loot will be wired to you as it was always supposed to be. You will not have access to my contacts any longer, you will no longer be under my protection, you will be out on your own. If you don’t want to be one of us, you’re under no obligation.”

Palermo looked tempted. It would take them some time to realise just what they were giving up by walking away but they would come to see the difficulties ahead of them soon. Sergio had not counted on Palermo, nor on his henchmen. If he had the team from the Royal Mint, he had everything he needed.

When he said that he was out, that he had done the job he came to do and that he wasn’t risking his life for a woman he barely knew. Marseille and Bogota followed suit. He watched them go and wondered how far they would get. He wondered what would happen to them.

The remaining five made no attempt to leave. Between them, they were all that was left of the original heist. They thought of Oslo and of Berlin, of Moscow and of Nairobi. It was what forced them to agree in the end, the thought of losing another from their ranks wasn’t something they could face. They had to try, each and every one of them, whether they wanted to or not.

“She was ready to die for all of us, I’m in.” Denver declared. With silent nods, Rio and Stockholm agreed. It was with an unexpected passion that Helsinki clapped his hand onto The Professor’s shoulder and showed his support. Tokyo was the last to agree which surprised nobody, but she conceded defeat nonetheless.

They were going to get her back. _Lisboa,_ he wanted to say, _nosotros estamos en camino._ It wouldn’t take long, he truly believed that he had figured out the best plan possible for such a task and they all would be in Zarzis by the weekend.

They all would be in Zarzis with Raquel.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is the first of a bulk upload all the way up to the end! i really just got into the headspace and finished it all, so anyone who's reading along is going to get a surprise when they check in. hope you all enjoy!

Hours of mulling it over had guided her to the conclusion that she couldn’t yet lose hope. There was nothing that she could do to change what would happen and so instead, she simply had to wait. Patience had never been her strong suit but she was stuck with nothing to occupy her thoughts but faith that he might come for her.

She dreamt of Palawan. It was all that she could think of to keep the nightmares at bay. She dreamt of mornings on the beach with Paula. She dreamt of her mother. She dreamt of _him._ More than anything else, she dreamt of him.

Her stomach always woke her. She never got a full night’s sleep for the grumbling of her gut. It was so empty now that hunger was forgotten and there was only a lingering sense of emptiness that she knew would eventually subside. Eating felt like surrender, as if the food was just another thing they could take away from her if they decided to. She wondered how Rio had coped for so long, she wondered if he hadn’t gone completely insane.

It felt like it had been days when the inspector returned to speak to her once again. She told her that she had found traces of the robbers and that they had left just as she suggested. She ensured her that for her co-operation, she would be repaid. She asked her where Paula was, that she might bring her to her, but Raquel played dumb to her questions. She gave her no answers at all.

Alicia’s temper rose so slowly that it was hard to keep track of. It took Raquel by surprise and she wondered how she had failed to see it coming. She was no longer the judge of character she used to be.

“Get her out of my sight,” Alicia ordered. “I don’t want to look at her anymore. Get rid of her.”

Raquel had not expected such rage out of the well-tempered inspector she had come to know these past days. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen in her before. Still, she kept her cool and went obediently.

It was the logical next step. She had been waiting for the moment when she was no longer deemed significant. They would dump her somewhere and try their best to forget all about her, and she would oblige them. To be left in isolation for the rest of the days was the best that she could hope for. If she couldn’t have the company of those she loved then she craved no company at all.

The robbery was over. It made sense for them to move her. The investigation had no use for her any longer. They would keep her somewhere in the hopes that she could be used a bargaining chip, but she would for all intents and purposes, be left alone to rot.

That was the last thing Alicia ever said to her and it ran laps in her head afterwards. _Get rid of her._ They wouldn’t kill her; at least she hoped they had not yet stooped so low as to illegal executions. _Get rid of her,_ she had said and Raquel wondered if she couldn’t make things easier by dying of her own accord.

She would not be afforded the same privileges as Rio. No coffee to keep her awake, no kindnesses to earn her trust, just every tool they sad to send her insane.

They would take her to Guantanamo or somewhere equally as bad and they would hide her away there until Sergio turned up dead. They would never release her. She had never really believed that they would. The threat she posed was too great to be overlooked, so she would suffer each day and she would wonder when he was going to come back for her. Paula would ask him and as had been proved a dozen times, he was incapable of saying no to her when she asked for something.

They drove for days, she was convinced it must have been that long, and she had slept. She drifted in and out of consciousness with nothing to focus on in the dank, pitch-black van in which she spent the journey. With every twist and turn in the road, she swung violently from side to side but she was too tired to care if she smacked her head into the metal caging. A concussion might help her to sleep better.

In the darkness and the timelessness of being completely unaware of her surroundings, her thoughts started to wander and she couldn’t help but think about what was to come.

Oftentimes she wondered if she should leave it all behind. They all would be safe if she had just stayed dead. Sergio would have grieved and moved on and everything would’ve worked out so much more easily. A part of her wished Suarez had just shot her dead in that barn.

It was a reckless thought, and selfish too, to abandon her mother and Paula, but she indulged herself occasionally.

She was still waiting for the right moment. She had been waiting to get away from Alicia before she pulled her trump card. It wasn’t something that she could get away with twice. She just had to pray that they were looking out for it. _Please, God,_ she prayed, _let them be watching._


	16. Chapter 16

They set up in an abandoned house with no equipment at all save the laptop that The Professor had saved and the surveillance gear that they had taken with them from the bank. It wasn’t much, and if the task proved trying, they would have to make some upgrades.

“She never left me for more than a few hours. If she’s doing the same thing now, she has to be staying pretty close to Lisbon. If we find _their_ Inspector, we find ours too.”

It was the smartest thing that Rio had ever said. They had gone from tracking a prisoner with no access to technology to tracking a woman with a registered phone number and an easily hackable online workplace agenda that detailed her daily routine.

It took longer than expected to get into the police force’s system without any of the software they normally relied on. Still, they eventually got in and started trawling through the schedule of Alicia Sierra, hoping to find a good time to pounce.

“We can’t just follow her around for weeks until she happens to go and visit Lisbon. We have to be smart about this. We have to figure out where she goes during the gaps in her schedule and _that_ is where we find Lisbon,” Tokyo suggested.

Never in his life had Sergio been forced to rely upon the other members of his team in anything other than the _execution_ of a plan and frankly, it was driving him mad. Even when they were right, he was frustrated with them.

Tracking Alicia proved relatively easy, but keeping hold of her was harder. She was the sort of woman who switched her phone off when she wasn’t using it and _that_ meant there was no such thing as a firm hold on her location.

Sergio was losing patience. It had been almost twelve hours and it felt like they were no closer to finding Raquel.

By some miracle, Alicia seemed to make a call just as she was leaving the police station of a town called Almoradiel. It was over an hour’s drive from the city centre. There was nothing on her schedule. It _had_ to be.

“ _Profesor,_ ” Stockholm began.

“Wait a minute, Stockholm. I think I’ve found her. I don’t have time to listen to you all chatter on about your ideas when I’m trying to do my work.”

He didn’t mean to snap, he was only trying to focus. Every time he got into the swing of it, somebody insisted on pulling him back to the surface.

“ _PROFESOR!_ ” she yelled. _Like that._ “Lisbon activated her GPS chip.”

He didn’t even bother to question her, instead, he snatched the tablet out of her hands and saw it on the map. A tiny, pulsating red dot in the middle of the screen.

She was just outside of Bilbao. A long drive, but straightforward at the very least.

“I would’ve thought they’d extracted it. Did they not even bother to check?” Sergio scoffed. “We need to start preparing ourselves. Denver and I will drive out first, early, before the sun. Helsinki and Tokyo will follow an hour and a half behind us. Stockholm and Rio will stay here and man the control room. You two are our eyes and ears out there.”

Everything had fallen so perfectly into place that it scared him. He wouldn’t let the others sense his doubts but buried deep inside of him, they lingered. What if they _had_ found the chip and they were using to play with them. What if they _knew_ that Raquel had got a message to him? What if it was all a trick and Raquel really was dead? He gave those thoughts no room to breathe; she was alive.

“You’re going into the field, Professor?” Denver questioned, a little baffled to tell the truth and it might have offended Sergio if it wasn’t a fair observation.

“Only a little. I’m the bait, you see. I’ll make myself seen and they will realise that we’re coming for Lisbon. They’ll think the best plan is to divide; they’ll send half of their manpower after me, and they’ll use the other half to securely transport her elsewhere. That’s where Tokyo and Helsinki come in.”

He explained the entire plan to them in great detail and by the time the clock struck six, they all were readied for the difficult task ahead of them. Tonight, they would all rest themselves so they were at their prime for the trouble they would face in the morning. Sergio wouldn’t rest at all, try though he might.

They never stepped foot inside any of the bedrooms, nor the kitchen in all truth. Every clue they left would guide the cops one step closer to them and they wanted a clean getaway, hard as that was to believe in the current circumstance.

All of them slept on the lounge floor, paired up in each corner. Denver and Stockholm had wrapped themselves up in a blanket and slept the most soundly of all. Helsinki and Rio both tossed and turned all night and by some miracle, didn’t knock each other’s teeth out. But Tokyo and The Professor got no sleep at all, not a blink between the two of them. While his anxiety was warranted, he wondered what was running through Tokyo’s head.

“I’ll bring her back, Professor,” Tokyo whispered sweetly into the darkness. “I think I owe it to her after she proved me so immeasurably wrong. You pick them well.” 

_“Gracias,”_ he mumbled back nervously.

There was a lot more he could’ve said. A lot of things that she deserved to hear but he would not say them to her now. She was _trying_ , that was all he could ask of her or anybody anymore. He might have told her that she was selfish and that she was foolish but that would do no good.

“ _Dormir, Tokio._ ” She turned away from him and seemed, at the least, to rest her eyes. He couldn’t bring himself even to that, behind his eyelids, all he could see were the trees of the forest he had chased through to save her. To fail in saving her. 


	17. Chapter 17

She didn’t know what was going on. She had been given multiple promises that she would be released and though she had no trust in them, she knew there was no point in holding her any longer. Was Sergio planning something? Was he trying to bargain with them? She had no clue and yet she knew somewhere deep inside that he was the only reason they had for keeping her any longer.

When they moved her, she had imagined that they were going to release her strategically. Instead, they had just transferred her from a dank, small room in one building to a dank, small room somewhere else. She didn’t know where she was anymore, she had fallen asleep in the back of the transport van and lost track of the time completely. She feared they had taken her abroad.

“Time to go, Murillo. We can’t have you getting bored,” she was sick of his face. Every time he came to bring her food or to relay one of Alicia’s pointless messages, he looked at her like he was going to kill her. He would get his money when she got out, he _would,_ but he was growing skeptical with each passing day. “You ready for another lovely drive in the countryside?”

It frightened her not knowing what they had planned. It wasn’t as though she ever _truly_ had an idea but at least she had been able to deduce upon their decisions before. Now, she was completely in the dark and she was trusting in the people who most wanted her dead.

“Again?” she asked, exhausted from the days of restless, broken sleep. “Aren’t you sick of babysitting me yet?”

It wasn’t worth trying to argue or to draw information out of them. They all were clueless and happy in their ignorance. Instead, she followed along with them and held on to the knowledge that no matter where they took her, Sergio could follow.

Their driving was erratic. She’d never noticed it before. It had always felt like they were carrying cargo and she just happened to be their next delivery but the way that they drove had changed. It felt like they were running.

Raquel refused to get her hopes up. They could be running from anything. There were a hundred different reasons and yet, there was only one that she could think of. _Has he come back for me?_ There wasn’t an answer for her. There was nothing she could do to ease her mind but wait and hope that someone was coming for her.

When they stopped, her heart started racing. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t stop herself from thinking that it _might_ be him.

Sitting in the dark, she had nothing to do but wait patiently and listen for signs of life. She heard a commotion outside, some shouting, something hitting the side of the van.

The doors were yanked open with great force and her confusion turned to relief as she saw Helsinki’s face. He grinned at her and made a dig about letting herself get captured before opening his arms to her. She fell into them with a grin and wondered if she’d ever known a feeling quite so glorious.

 _“Está el aquí?”_ She only dared to ask it as she stepped out of the van and saw daylight for the first time in what felt like years.

“It wasn’t safe.” The second voice startled her. Of all people, she had not expected Tokyo to come to her rescue, and yet, here she was. “We all had to fight him on it but he knew it was far safer if we came.”

“Tokyo, do you have a knife?” Raquel refused to be hurt by his smart thinking and so she distracted herself from it. “Give it to me. Tokyo, give me it.”

The younger woman reluctantly handed her a small blade and furrowed her brow.

Without hesitation, she sliced into the skin behind her ear and bit her lip to keep from crying. She prized open the skin with her overgrown nails and reached for the bug they had implanted. They had tried to be discrete in bugging her but she had felt it inside of her as soon as she had woken up. The body knows itself and she had known what they had done from the moment they had done it.

It came out easily and she held it in the palm of her hand for a moment, thinking quietly to herself.

“Helsinki, go and radio to say we stopped so I could relieve myself. Put on an accent, a good one, and keep it brief.”

He grunted and strode to the driver’s seat. There was still a lingering obedience in him that would never truly fade. Helsinki was a soldier through and through, and Raquel wondered what he would do with the rest of his life now he was free, with nobody to take care of him.

She took a few strides to the roadside and listened carefully.

“ _Lo siento, señor. Esta puta necesita mear. Estamos adelantados, no hay problemas hasta ahora. Terminado._ ” It would give them a little time, they wouldn’t expect such fast action. “Now, you go. Give me that bug.”

Raquel looked at him like she didn’t understand him. The words made sense but she didn’t understand what he was planning to do, or rather she did and she didn’t want to. He had already lost a brother and a best friend for them and now he was going to risk himself so that she might get away cleanly. She couldn’t bear it.

He looked at her with such confidence. He wasn’t going to be persuaded otherwise and it broke her heart but she tossed the bug into the back of the van and shut the doors for him.

_“Adios, Helsinki.”_

She didn’t want to believe it was the last time she would see him but she had already endured so much heartbreak. She had to prepare herself for the worst. She had to prepare herself to lose someone else.

Tokyo drove even faster than usual. At first, Raquel thought it was just to piss her off, but when they slowed down a little, Tokyo impulsively reached over and set her hand on Lisbon’s thigh; she flinched but didn’t draw away, furrowing her brow as she glanced over at Tokyo.

“I’m glad you’re not dead, and I’m glad you’re not a traitor either.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sequel will begin soon, definitely over the next couple of days. Hope you enjoyed everything so far. It will be linked in the summary.

He tried to keep himself busy. He let Denver fill the car with heavy music that did no good in drowning out his thoughts. He calculated a dozen different scenarios where everything went wrong and Raquel ended up dead.

When they passed a sign for Coria, he turned off the radio and sat up straight in his seat.

“Shouldn’t we have heard something by now?” “They would’ve called as soon as they were all heading back, right? So, do you think something’s gone wrong?”

Denver scoffed at him. Nobody had ever seen him quite like this. Andres had been the closest and still, Sergio’s brother would be shocked to see him in such a state over some woman. Denver’s expression was almost knowing.

“Can’t you see why I worry so much about Stockholm now?” Everyone had taken Stockholm’s side by default, they had seen where she was coming from and taken no time to consider the struggle that Denver was facing in watching his wife risk her life for these people she owed no loyalty to.

“I only worry she _won’t_ protect herself, not that she can’t, Denver. You know Stockholm is capable, she has proved that to you and all of us many times. Anyway, you’ll never have to worry about it again. This is the end of it all. Everybody is either safe or dead, there’s nothing more that we can do. We go our separate ways now, Denver, and our lives begin again.”

The drive had been a long one and the exhaustion of the past few days was finally beginning to catch up with him but the anxiety kept him from falling asleep. He had been certain that the plan would work; he had been counting on the incompetencies of the police force and they had always proved him right.

_Where the fuck were they?_

The mobile which sat on the dashboard started ringing and Sergio had it up against his ear before Denver had even noticed it.

“Sí?”

He knew it was her before she even said a word. He knew her by the way she breathed. He could recognise her simply by the sound of her silence.

 _“Profesor,”_ she greeted and at that moment, he knew something was wrong. _“Tengo buenas noticias y malas noticias.”_

Her voice brought him almost to tears, but her tone frightened him so intently that he couldn’t bring himself to be happy just yet.

“ _Que? Que, Raquel? Dime!”_

Denver had picked up speed whether consciously or not and they were racing down the motorway so fast that Sergio could no longer keep track of the signs they passed.

“Before they broke me out, Tokyo and Helsinki found out where they were taking me. They were going to hide me in Andorra, somewhere. They inserted a tracker chip into me like the one they put in Rio, and I knew I had to take it out right there and then so I did but, well, Helsinki thought it wasn’t safe to risk it. He wanted to buy us more time to get away. He’s driving the police van to Andorra with the tracker chip.”

That wasn’t in the plan. They had been certain that without any tracking, it would be easy to get away from the police and to make a clean break for the border. What was Helsinki thinking taking that kind of a risk?

“ _Profesor, fue una misión suicida._ ”

There was a long, stretching silence that neither of them knew how to break. He had known that Helsinki had taken Nairobi’s death to heart and that he’d been struggling a great deal but extent had gone unnoticed.

“ _Y las buenas noticias?”_ It felt unfair to joke. It felt cruel to make light of such a miserable situation but Sergio couldn’t stop himself. He just wanted to hear the smile in her voice, even for a moment.

“Tokyo decided against killing me on sight for getting myself caught,” Raquel stated and he could hear the beginnings of a smile, barely there at all. “We’ll be with you in a couple of hours, I think.”

“Indeed you will, Lisbon.” He couldn’t hide the smile that grew on his face. It had felt like forever without her and finally, the end was in sight. “Stay safe.”

Sergio hung up and dropped the phone into his lap, exhaling heavily. Denver kept flicking his gaze between the road and The Inspector impatiently.

“Helsinki is trying to get himself killed. The girls are on their way. I’m going to kill that idiotic Serb if I ever see his face again.”

The only fact in which Sergio could take refuge was how well-armed Helsinki remained. They wouldn’t take him alive, that much was certain. If he didn’t get away cleanly, they wouldn’t torture him as they had tortured Rio. He would die a martyr, he would die a symbol of the revolution which he stood at the heart of it. He would die.

He tried to cling to his anger and his worry but his mind kept getting distracted with the hope of seeing Raquel soon. It was the only thing he could think about and still, there was doubt ingrained in him that it could all go wrong and they could lose each other forever.

Two hours. That was it. Two hours and then she’d be back in his arms and he’d never let her out of his sight again for the rest of their lives. They could disappear forever and start a new life with Marivi and Paula. Two hours for everything to fall apart.


End file.
